


Calendar.

by orange_crushed



Series: Monsters. [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: AU, F/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 02:51:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He wonders what she's doing.</i></p><p> </p><p>The Doctor and Rose, slayer and vampire, oh-so-totally AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He still has nightmares.

They all used to be the same; he'd be closing up in the library and walking home, jogging up and down the curb to get a little agility training in, and there'd be a scream from the graveyard. In the dream he'd run in, confident, stake in hand, already with his eye on his opponent, closing in, and then- then the shadow would fall over him, and he'd be scrambling backwards in the grass, blindly terrified, nothing in his reach. And there was a figure clouded by darkness, looming over him, white teeth in a stained mouth. Always the same. "Hello, boy," that shadow used to say, in those dreams. "You look tired." And then massive hands would reach down and claw at his throat and the slayer would scream and thrash and wake up half the neighborhood.

His parents took him to therapy and Yana took him to some kind of dusty meditation temple and his friends took him out and tried to get him smashed, but nobody could get rid of the dreams. They're different now, somehow; faded, kaleidoscoping and shifting under his consciousness. He dreams the fight, the darkness, like he's supposed to. But sometimes-

-sometimes she's all around him in the air, the smell of her perfume and the soft sound of her sighs, her lips at his ear. She's the comfortable weight slung over his hips, tangled under the sheets, tumbling and laughing, the sound of her happiness moving to the surface like waves breaking gently, endlessly over sand.

"Rose," he says, in those dreams, and she throws the covers off, smiles messy and gorgeous in the morning light, her hair caught in her eyelashes and curling flyaway in a dozen directions. "Rose," he repeats, pulls her closer and presses his mouth to hers, feels the cool solid skin against his hands. She whispers his name and her human teeth are perfectly white, lips bare and pinking from the kiss. He looks at her and the sunlight filtering through the blinds touches her edges, halos her and caresses every curve, outlines her in faint, moth-wing gold like a Byzantine virgin. And then Rose reaches down and smiles and puts her hand over his heart. _Here,_ she whispers, and bursts into flames as his eyes open to the ceiling, hands clutching the pillow and his throat choked with fear.

He lies awake afterwards in the retreating dark of his room, shades pulled down, listening through the thin walls. It's just past dawn; his neighbors are starting to get up, turn on their taps and radios and thump around looking for breakfast, shoes, car keys, a goodbye kiss.

He wonders what she's doing.

 

 

"You're late," she says.

"You're early." He taps his watch. "Not quite eleven. Perhaps you're just eager to see me." He grins, tries for nonchalance. It nearly works. Rose smirks at him and uncrosses her legs, slides off the gravestone. There are cigarette butts sitting in a pot of dead geraniums at her feet; Silk Cut. She's been waiting. They fall into step and patrol in companionable silence, close enough that their hands might brush together as they walk, hiking over the broken stones and listening for the sound of anything stirring in the woods beyond. It's quieter than usual, summer haze lying on the neighborhood like a layer of carded wool, fuzzy on the senses. Her hair is tied up, curls soft and loose at the back of her neck. Rose smells like lilies, like soil. A handful of cars pass on the road far behind them, bringing the low comforting hum of engines and the flicker of headlights ghosting on the shapes of trees. He watches her walking out of the corner of his eye. "So," he says, "been busy?" She looks at him as if he's lost his mind. "I just mean, you know, things happen, haven't seen you in-"

"Forty-nine hours?" There's laughter lurking at the twitching corner of her lips. "Yeah, I had tons to do. Rushing around, here and there. You missed a lot." He glances at her in surprise, suddenly imagining her at the grocery store, in the corridors of the library, at the hairdresser's; lurking around the backs of coffee shops, shades drawn down over her eyes, hair in a bun, halfway through some ancient first edition.

"Really?"

"No," says Rose, rolling her eyes. And then she says, "look out," because there's a very tall vampire in a Morrissey t-shirt hurtling towards them. The slayer ducks and Rose feints left, swings right, connects solidly and sends the vampire flying. He picks himself off, spitting dirt, and rushes at Rose. "Is that original?" she asks, and he pauses in mid-kick. The vampire beams at her, holding the hem of his shirt out.

" _Kill Uncle_ tour, 1991. Best night of my life." He grins, yellow eyes alight, knobbly forehead wrinkling further. "Last night of my life. I was feeling nostalgic." Rose shrugs and smiles, charmingly. "Hey, I'm staying at the empty house on Scots' Lane. Got a battery-powered stereo, pretty sweet. You should come over sometime-"

-he explodes in mid-sentence, and the slayer dusts his hands off.

"I think I prefer their Rough Trade days, myself," he says. "Did he say Scots' Lane?" Rose nods. He twirls the stake he's been holding loosely between his fingers. "Do you feel like a little exercise?"

Rose tilts her head back and smiles up at the moon. Her fangs are out, just slightly, white points slipping over her bottom lip.

"Allons-y," she says.

 

 

"Forgive me for suggesting this," Yana sighs, "but are you perhaps a bit- distracted?" The slayer looks up from his notebook, where he's been drawing climbing vines and stars in the margins for the better part of an hour. There's a faint trail of drool on the side of his mouth. He wipes his cheek with his sleeve and looks up, embarrassed. He shakes off the lethargy and tries to put on an attentive face.

"I'm just- where were we? Charlie Kelly, wasn't it?" He glances down at his scribbled notes; the tail end of every sentence loops up into the vines and is lost. There's a metaphor there somewhere, but he's too tired to pull it together. "Called in 1892 in Barrington, Illinois. Defeated the Black Gate Society at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893." He takes a breath. "Died, 1895."

"Yes. Fine." Yana pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand. "The names and dates aren't enough, you must realize. This is your education, your path to understanding. This is where you've come from, your line, the sacred history-" he pauses. "When you bang your head on the table like that, I worry."

"I'm sorry." He sighs into the countertop. It's cool and smooth, almost as good as a pillow at the moment. "I'm very sorry. I didn't get back until nearly three. There was a nest on Scots' Lane, near the construction site. Three vampires and a Groxlar Beast. It took a while to flush them all out." He sits up and rests his chin on one hand. "To say the place was a fixer-upper doesn't quite cover it. There was a pile of rat bones in the basement, a foot deep. Weirdest bit is, I think they were making an effort. Would you believe they were assembling a dinette set when we surprised them?"

"A dinette-" Yana begins, and stops. "We?"

"Me and, er, Rose."

"Ah." There's a noticeable chill in his tone. "The vampire led you there?"

"Not exactly." The slayer sits up. He feels a tick of irritation gnawing at the base of his spine. " _She_ killed their roommate, and _we_ decided to follow the lead." Yana's expression sinks into a skeptical frown; one that provokes another strange flash of aggravation. He doesn't have to be a mind reader to guess at the source of Yana's too-obvious displeasure. "It wasn't a trap, if that's what you're trying to imply." To his surprise, Yana doesn't stammer out a refusal, just shakes his head and turns another page in the chronicles, rubbing the binding with the edge of his thumb.

"Not at all," he says. "Shall we continue?"

"Fine." He glances sullenly at his notes. "Who's next?" Yana doesn't answer. When he looks up, the older man is staring down at the page, perfectly still. "Professor?"

"Yes." He blinks and smiles, distantly. "Yes. Sorry. It's, ah- Smith. John Smith." He traces down the headings that spell out the birth, brief life and death of the slayer. "Called in 1895, at the relatively late age of twenty-three. What do you remember from your readings?"

"A Navy man," he says, automatically. There'd been a picture of Smith tucked inside one of the journals, a grainy photo taken by a watcher particularly keen on technology. He remembers the man in the portrait, thin and tall, short hair cropped close to his head and his posture stiff like a steel rod. There'd been a worn pea coat in his hand, though he was already wearing a heavy sweater. He doesn't know why he remembers, why this photo stood out more than the rest, except that there'd been something sad and knowing on the other slayer's face. Something resigned. He remembers staring down at that photo, at the coat crumpled in his grip and the calm loneliness in the man's eyes, the way he'd faced the camera without bothering to hide behind a smile. "Dishonorable discharge," he adds, finally. "Though I don't remember why."

"He disobeyed orders," Yana says. "He was ashore at Tuvalu and a fight broke out between crew members. Smith was ordered to return to the ship; he disobeyed, struck a superior officer and ran. He was captured and eventually dismissed upon his return to England." Yana turns the page. "Of course we know, as they did not, that he was seeking a member of the crew believed dead, who had been turned and was killing within the village."

"Did Smith find him?"

"It's unclear." Yana frowns. "Smith took up work on the docks and continued to operate as the slayer. There are indications that he focused on vampire activity in the shipping trade, foiling schemes for human trafficking and the import of dangerous magical goods."

"Half slayer, half customs agent. Brilliant." He grins and Yana doesn't. "Sorry. Anything else?"

"No," says Yana. "There was a new slayer in 1899." Yana keeps talking, about the next poor fool in line, but he's already stopped listening. Four years. He can't imagine how briefly they passed. That's how long it lasted, for Smith; long enough to get kicked out of his job, to work on the docks every day and face horror and violence every night, to sleep fitfully and dream of darkness. To lose friends and live alone, not trusting, not hoping; to lay awake sometimes and wonder what happens when the blood drains out, when the bones are snapped and papery and your eyes roll back and finally, finally-

-he tells Yana that he's got to take a break, getting a little peckish, and instead of going to the fridge he goes out the back door and down the back steps and away. He leaves his bag and his phone. He walks to the cemetary and sits alone at the edge, watching the afternoon sun sink below the clouds.

It's hours before she comes.

He hears her footsteps behind him in the grass. She's not trying to be stealthy but she can't help the way she moves. When she's close enough she stops; every sense in his body describes her, knows and startles against her unnaturalness, vibrates with anticipation. He's the slayer, after all. He can feel the demon that's supposed to simmer under her surface. He's looked for it since the moment he met her, and he sees it sometimes, shining out from her eyes when she fights and tears and cries out from the joy of the kill. But right now he smells her shampoo and hears her necklace jingling against her throat. He doesn't understand. He doesn't know where to begin.

He turns to face her and she's standing there with her hands at her sides, waiting. Watching. She looks twenty-two years old.

"Why me?" he says. "Why do you care?"

"I don't know," she says. There's a beat. Rose stares at him, and her eyes are gold and brown, flecked with rays like points of sunlight. Impossibly bright. "But I do." She reaches down to offer him a hand up.

He takes it without thinking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't feel ready.

Rose is redecorating.

"You missed a spot," he says, and ducks the cleaning rag she's throwing at his face. "Tsk, too slow." She grins and shakes her head and goes back to the bookshelf.

She's sitting cross-legged on the floor of the crypt, on a gorgeous Persian carpet with a large and suspicious old stain in the middle. There are little half-stacks of books around her, in no order at all. Madness. He's tried to let her alphabetize them by author, or at least group them by subject, and she just smiles her cat's smile and says, _I have them the way I like them_. It would be infuriating on anyone else. But she's wearing a silk scarf around her hair and little curls keep tumbling out, and her lovely pale hands are tracing the spines of the books, selecting the right ones and slipping them onto the shelves with focused care. It's strangely soothing; he lies back on the duvet wrinkling beneath him, stares up at the beams and candles crossing the ceiling. His finger taps the book he's just put down, some collection of twentieth-century poetry, the pages dog-eared and the cover tattered. He drifts.

Rose's collection is impressive, despite the trashy romance novels and true-crime thrillers she accumulates on five-fingered discount from the supermarket racks. There are classics and first editions mixed in with those, surprising treasures. Once, waiting for her to finish lacing up her boots, he'd flipped through a few covers to discover a faded copy of _The Tower_ , with _to another Rose_ inscribed on the title page in an infamously wandering hand. "Is this- you couldn't have-" he'd muttered, stunned, and she'd just winked and told him to get moving.

"Penny for your thoughts," she says, behind him. Her shadow crosses overhead. He didn't hear her moving, but he feels her leaning in near his shoulder, resting her hand on the bedpost for balance. "Normally, you'd already be talking my ear off about some new metadata-thing, or how you invented a new catalogue structure and nobody can see how brilliant it is. Yet," she adds, tip of her tongue between her teeth. "Go on, then. Astonish me."

"Mm," he says, comfortably. "Not really so astonishing. July's quiet. No school book reports. Lots of time to catch up on projects, though. Today I re-did the sorting shelves. You know, the labels were in almost total disarray," he continues, seriously, and Rose bursts out laughing, hiding her mouth with one hand.

"Um, nothing," she says. "Nothing." Her eyes are dancing.

"What?"

"Really, it's nothing." He scowls and sits up and crosses his arms over his chest, and Rose trembles with contained hilarity. "Into every generation, a slayer is born," she intones. "He alone," and here she giggles, "will have the strength and speed to re-label the shelves."

She cracks up and he grabs her around the middle, aiming for her vulnerable sides with the tips of his fingers. Rose ducks away from him and he rolls over the bed after her, landing on his feet and springing up to catch her around the waist. She shrieks with laughter and topples down onto the books, turns them both over to push him down. Hardbacks prod into his spine and he yelps. There is a moment of fumbled wrestling; she's fast but he's faster at the moment, long limbs twisted around hers, pinning her against the carpet with his knees on either side of her hips. Rose fidgets and blows the end of the scarf out of her face and then is perfectly still. She smiles up at him. "Your librarian's reflexes are improving," she says.

"You should watch me index," he murmurs, and Rose lets go of another hysterical chuckle. She reaches up and strokes the soft, fine hair at his temples. He leans forward and brushes his mouth against hers; a whisper of air between them, barely a kiss. She leans up into it, parting her lips, and it's wonderful and then it's suddenly too much, too much, Rose beneath him and all around him, Rose _roseroserose_ -

-he pulls back and his pulse beats terrified and fierce, remembering a hand over his heart and Rose wreathed in flames, those horrible dreams. He watches her, wide-eyed. Nothing happens for a long minute, and then Rose says,

"Are you alright?"

He doesn't have an answer for that.

 

 

On patrol that night there is a broken grave smeared with fresh blood; he stakes the first vampire that charges him and then he stares at the red for a long time, the rivulets and latticework where it spilled out and stained, the veined paths it took in the grain of marble. He reads and wonders, recognizing something. He divines. Rose is somewhere chasing down the second vampire. After a minute, he hears her growl of triumph and the sound of flesh exploding into dust. He kneels down and puts his hand in the blood, tests it with a finger.

Still warm.

"Something's coming," he tells Yana, the next morning. Yana is still in his dressing gown, fingers wrapped around a mug of tea. The slayer's own mug is cooling, ignored, on the counter. He looks down at his hands, knotted together in his lap. "You said, when all this started, that there are things I'm just going to know, and I'm not going to know why."

"Premonitions. A slayer's gift." His watcher stares at him. "The dreams again?"

"Not really," he lies. He thinks about it. He dreamed of blood, and stone, and for a strange second in the graveyard it all seemed to fit. He still doesn't understand, not yet. "Sort of. I don't know. I don't know what, I just- everything feels wrong, off somehow. I just know something's coming." He lifts his head and meets the old man's eyes; they're tired but warm, somehow comforting. Adult. They make this bit a little easier. A little. "It's like, before the lightning hits- before the clouds even roll in. The taste of the air, the way the hair stands up on the back of your neck."

"The oncoming storm," Yana suggests. The slayer nods.

"Yeah," he agrees, and reaches for his mug. There's a trace of warmth still lingering, or else his hands are just unbearably cold. "Exactly." He blows across the top of his tea, exhaling almost like a sigh. "What happens next?" he asks, and Yana's mouth quirks up in a half-smile.

"I don't know," says Yana, "that I'm the one you should be asking that question."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asks, but Yana doesn't answer.

 

 

His fist connects with bone, and the bone gives way.

"Holy _fuck_ ," the vampire slurs, and staggers backwards. "Who the fuck are you?" It comes out like _who um fuh ur yoo_. He doesn't seem to be pleased at the distraction; seconds ago, they were prying him off the throat of a struggling pizza delivery man. Who has in turn already high-tailed it in the direction of town center without so much as a mumbled thanks. The vampire paws at his own face, screeches with fury when he presses against the shattered jaw. "You are a real asshole," he hollers, incomprehensibly.

Behind him, unhelpfully, Rose is laughing.

"Are you new in town?" she asks, circling the fence. She turns and smirks, ignoring the vampire. "It's been a while, hasn't it? Since we met anyone who didn't recognize you." The slayer folds his arms across his chest. "You should get a nametag," she adds. "Public defender, ask me how."

"Ha ha." He frowns. "Shall we get on with it?" Rose's eyes light up.

"After you," she smiles, predatory.

"Ladies first."

"Get on with what?" garbles the vampire, and Rose jumps the curb to launch herself at its throat. The vampire swings at her clumsily and then lands a solid punch to her stomach; she falls backwards but scissors her legs out, knocking him down and rolling on top of him. She breaks his neck with a vicious twist and dusts him a second later. She stands, feline, still trailed by a cloud of bone ash, smiling like a loon.

He really does love to watch her fight.

They circle the graveyard again, talking about nothing important. Rose has gotten herself a second-hand television, though the reception below-ground is probably going to prove impossible. He suggests a dvd player.

"Sure," she smirks. "Though it'll have to wait for fall. I don't think I can fit any major electronics under this t-shirt."

"I'm not listening to your criminal boasts," he says, hands over his ears. But against his better judgment he glances down at the fabric stretched across her front, faded in the blues and still triumphant in the reds. "No," he agrees. "I think this particular Union Jack's got its hands full already." Rose grins, her eyes liquid and dark again, inviting. He glances away, embarrassed, but the blood's already at the tops of his ears, flushing his face. There's more left over from the fight than he cares to admit, sometimes. The rush. He wants her cool skin under his palms. He's about to speak, to ask her something he's never asked her before, when she stops and stills, her hand on top of his forearm. She tilts her head up, slightly, as if she's breathing the night air. Another impossibility, but then, that's all she is.

"Run," she says. He doesn't react. " _Run_ ," she says again, urgently, her eyes wide and white at the rims. She shoves him backwards, looking around towards the road, the streetlights in the distance, the flicker of lights in the town beyond. "Go, slayer."

"What-"

" _Go_ ," she hisses, and he backs up. Her fangs are out, her eyes shifting wildly from one color to the next. He reaches out for her, to pull her along with him, but it's as if she's looking past him entirely. There is a sound from the brush, a soft noise like the footsteps of a cat. Rose actually trembles, and not for the first time the slayer thinks, _what in God's name is going on_?

There is something smiling in the leaves.

He can see it through a gap; there is enough light to catch a glint of white, a flash of brightness in the shadow. Shark's teeth, a row of them. They part and click and the vampire emerges from the shade. It is the tallest one he's ever seen, soaring past six feet, knotted and muscular like a stunted branch. Rose hisses again, a horrible sound she's never made before. The demon, or the woman, enraged beyond reason. The vampire smiles wider, too widely. It seems to split his face in half. There is a stain around his mouth, faint red and rust, _memento mori_ in heart's blood.

He doesn't feel ready.

"Hello, boy," it says.

The slayer's heart pounds in his ears.

 

 

He doesn't remember the rest of the fight. He remembers the beginning, the awkward first steps of the dance, ducking around, stake in hand, getting picked up in that massive grip and tossed into the air. He remembers Rose's horrible shriek, the spray of blood when she wrenched off a chunk of the vampire's arm; remembers Rose shaken off, flung against the side of a mausoleum with a sickening crunch. He remembers that creature over him, hands reaching down, the slayer's feet kicking out, connecting, the hands around his throat, the stake slicing at the vampire's face, splinters and snarls, growing weaker, those hands so tight, and the air rushing-

-he remembers the second his head hit stone, hard, the hollow thud of his skull and the instant darkness, the end of everything.

He thinks about Rose in that darkness, her startled eyes and her mouth paused in a cry; he thinks about the ends of her curls brushing between his fingers, the champagne bubbles in her laugh, the warmth and longing in her eyes when she's sure he's not looking. He's always looking, and never speaking, what a fool; and now it's all over, he'll never get to say it. He's gone and died and missed his chance, and now she'll never know.

It's that thought that switches him back on.

"Oh," he says. He opens his eyes, with effort. Rose is kneeling above him with her hands wrapped around his, both pairs pressed to her heart. "I'm not-"

"I love you," she says. It's so raw. There is a gash across her forehead, blood smeared down her shirt. He stares at her and the world seems to spin around and around above them, below them. He's not even afraid. He wants to swallow those words up, eat them and breathe them and keep them, until he understands.

"Oh," he says. "I know."

 

 

She half-drags him to Yana's house, and before he can even process that information, Yana is shining a flashlight in his eyes and putting a compress on his throbbing skull and insisting he change into a clean pair of pajamas. Rose isn't answering his questions, won't tell him what happened. He's too tired and sore to care. He ends up in the spare bedroom, in a pair of borrowed drawstring pants three inches too short and a plain undershirt. He is tucked in and given a glass of water and told to rest. He shuts his eyes for only a second.

That second probably lasts the night.

After a while there are muted sounds, tuning in and out of the dial in his head. Listening closely makes him dizzy, but he does it anyway, fighting off the duller edge of sleep, straining to hear words and voices. One low and one lower, both soft and tense.

"It's seven in the morning." It's Rose's voice, irritated. "Not exactly my favorite hour. And anyway, I'm not leaving him. If it bothers you, me being in your house-"

"That's not what I said." Yana now. He sounds- strange. "You did the right thing, bringing him here."

"Gosh, thanks." Pacing, the click of Rose's boots. "You're too kind."

"Rose," says Yana. The pacing stops, and there is a long silence. The slayer lies on his back and tries to focus his eyes, tries to hear the conversation, but everything's stopped. How wonders if he's gone deaf, retroactively, if the blow to his head knocked the sense literally out of him; but he can hear the clock ticking steadily and his own breath, harsh and flat in his ears. The curtains are pulled tight, but there's a leak of daylight on the ceiling. He's been sleeping for hours. He grits his teeth and leans up, tries to reach a sitting position. It hurts and the room spins around him; he seems to tip forward and back like a bowl of soup sloshing heavily from side to side. He pulls himself up by his knees, but it's too much. He groans out loud, little more than a sigh, and suddenly he hears the tap of Rose's boots again, the thump of the door opening too fast. Preternatural hearing, he sometimes forgets. She's framed by light from the hall, her face sharp with worry. The cut on her head is clean.

"Lie down," she says. She sits beside him, eases him back onto the pillow. "Give it another hour or so, you were seriously out."

"Weren't you supposed to keep me awake?"

"It's a myth," she says. "Relax. We'll be here when you feel like getting up." He glances at the door, at Yana, who is still standing awkwardly outside the frame. The old man nods, barely, at her words. "Go to sleep, slayer. Dream about the Bodleian Library," she says, and strokes his arm. "You're locked in overnight. With rollerskates." He makes a token protest, but it really is too comfortable to resist- the pillows under him, the circular press of her hand on his arm. There's only a thin screen between him and unconsciousness, and he's passing through it like a breeze. The last thing he hears is Yana's voice, rolling and steady, tidal waves rushing against the shore of all his dreams.

 _If you won't tell him_ , Yana says, _I will._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A bove maiore discit arare minor_.

When he wakes up, the curtains are open and sunlight is streaming in through the window on the eastern side. He blinks and sits up, easier this time. His mouth is gummy. He flexes his fingers and his back, enjoying the way the muscles tighten and then untangle. Feels alright. He pokes at his scalp, gingerly, and finds that it's sore but not throbbing. Well. There are a few perks to the job, very few, and this is one of them.

Yana's guest room is nondescript, adult; a bench by the window, a chest of drawers in a plain style, some framed botanicals and a bookcase with a handful of inoffensive selections (probably best not to keep one's extensive occult library in the same room as one's out-of-town relatives). He's never been in here before. He's slept on the sofa after a patrol, or when they were in the middle of something major, but never in the guest bed, tucked between homey blue plaid sheets, with a glass of water on the end table. He wonders suddenly when it was, the last time Yana had real company in this room, the last time he spoke or laughed or ate dinner with someone who wasn't him, and then is briefly ashamed of himself for never wondering that before.

He's throwing back the covers to stand when he finally notices it, sitting at the foot of the bed. He could have kicked it off the edge while he slept, but he didn't. It's an old book, or else a battered one, bound in canvas and fraying at the corners. He picks it up and checks the spine. A translation, the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke.

He opens to a page.

 _Again and again, however we know the landscape of love  
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,  
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others  
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together  
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again  
among the flowers, face to face with the sky._

He is turning to the next when a piece of paper flutters out, onto his lap, face down. There's a scrawl of handwriting on it. He picks it up by an edge, conscious of the age of the paper, yellowed and bent in a dozen creases, carefully smoothed out by someone's hand. It's heavy paper, thick, glossy on one side. A photograph. He turns it over and stares at it for a long, airless minute. He's seen it before, tucked into Yana's chronicles. Except- no, it isn't the same. It's easy to mistake it for the same photo: John Smith and his navy coat, stiff posture and plain clothes. But his face is turned, tilted. His eyes look straight ahead, just as before, but there's a softness in his mouth, the beginning of a tentative, reverent smile. He is looking out at someone beyond the camera. His eyes give everything away. There is a broken fold beside his face, a faded smear, warping the image slightly. It's as if someone rubbed a thumb over the line of those paper cheekbones a hundred times, remembering.

There was no dedication in the front of the book, inside the cover; he checked. But now he knows what he's going to find. He turns the photograph over in his hands and reads the note there, scratched in ink, in John Smith's sturdy, slanted hand.

 _For my Rose_ , it says.

 

 

She is downstairs in Yana's basement, playing dominoes alone. She's put towels over the glass-block windows. She sits cross-legged on an old chair, stacking the pieces across the top of the washing machine, knocking them down, and doing it again. He watches her go through a second cycle. She knows he's there.

"You didn't tell me," he says. She pauses and then she sets up another piece, and another. She tips them down and they land in a heap.

"No, I didn't."

He crosses the room and puts his hands on her shoulders, feels her settle and arch against his touch. She sits still and lets him rub small circles with his thumbs, traces the muscles in her neck and dips to her shoulders, unwinding the knots there.

"It's not really my business, is it," he says. "It was your secret to keep." Rose doesn't respond. "I guess I'm curious," he adds, "why you'd tell me now."

She puts a hand over his, stills him. He waits, patiently.

"Do you remember, when you asked me where I'd gone to school?" He does, vaguely. It had been in the middle of a million other questions: her favorite flavor of ice-cream, her favorite movies, what was her family like, had she ever been to Spain, to France, to America, does she know how to swim? He really is such an idiot. He'd asked them all, greedy to know. To know anything about her at all.

"Somewhere boring and posh, you said."

"I lied." She turns around now, looks up at him from the chair. "I went to a church school until I was ten, and then I went to work."

"Rose-"

"If you want to know, then listen," she says. "Sit and listen."

So he does.

 

 

"My father died when I was seven," she says. "There wasn't enough money. There was never enough money, but he was always trying these daft schemes, these inventions, always telling us it was going to be different this time. He was going to London for work, and there was an accident. Run over by a carriage." She glances away. "A waste."

"I'm sorry."

"So'm I," she murmurs. "We got by for a bit. Mum had a job as a cook, and when I was old enough I went to the mill. We lived by the sea, then." There's a note of something soft and fragile in her voice. "I loved it, looking out across the water, watching the gulls pass. Like it was the edge of the world, and there was still more world out there, far off and wonderful." She looks down and her mouth twists. "Stupid," she says, and he shakes his head.

"No," he says. "It isn't."

"Well." Rose half-smiles. "Anyway, it didn't last. Mum got sick, I missed work and got sacked. I was maybe sixteen. No. Seventeen. Just past my birthday. I was desperate. I started thinking, I'd do anything, to get a little money, to make things better, and- I was down at the docks, just walking. Just walking, and it was already dark, and there was a man at the corner. I thought, it's money. And I needed money. He followed me into the alley, and I'm thinking, this is it, and then he sinks his teeth into my throat." She tilts her head to the side and he can almost make out two tiny points on her neck, two faint shiny spots that healed long ago. His hands clench. "I screamed and then the man sort of," she waves her fingers in the air, "exploded. Dust and ash. And there was this Navvy with a busted chair leg, staring at me. Tall and skinny and sad-looking, and he just sticks out his hand to me, and says- _run_."

"John Smith."

"I thought he was mad at first, going on about vampires and destiny and demons and all of it. But it didn't matter, mad or not. Not to me." Her hands tangle tensely in her lap, and he wishes he could reach out and touch them, braid their fingers together for comfort. But he doesn't know if she'd pull away from him right now, and so he stays still. "He said run and I ran, and it was like we didn't stop."

"I saw the picture," he says. "I think I understand." She smiles, faintly. "You left that for me to find."

"I did." There's a beat. "Does it bother you?"

"No," he says, honestly. He knows that life moves on. There were a hundred slayers before him, a thousand, and there'll be a thousand after he's dead. Sometimes it hurts, and sometimes it's comforting. But what he's sure of is that Rose is here now, and so is he. Rose reaches out and takes his hands in hers, weaves his long fingers around hers firmly, holds them tight. He looks down at their joined hands and thinks, I'm not letting go. Maybe not ever.

"What happened tonight," she says. "I'm sorry. If I'd told you all of this sooner, maybe- I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't have gone the way it did." He's confused, and says as much. "The vampire. He- it's not the first time. I faced him a long time ago, and I lost."

"Lost?"

She parts her mouth and her fangs jut out slowly, sliding down across her lips. He watches them emerge, fascinated.

"I lost," she repeats. "Lost my life, lost everything. It was eighteen ninety-nine, my last year living. It was spring. He was calling himself Jim then, just Jim, but everybody called him the emperor of Dock Street." Her tone is acid. "He had the biggest vampire gang in the city. John was set on taking him down, all by himself, and I said no. I told him I wouldn't let him, not alone. So we went together. And like I said, we lost." She looks away. "They drank him dry in front of me. I don't know why they left me, why they didn't just kill me. I woke up three days later inside a grave. I was so hungry." He can't really imagine it, Rose climbing out of the ground, fingernails busted and hair black with earth. But he sees it sometimes, the dark in her, when her eyes are yellow and there's dirt and blood on her hands. He knows she's hungry still. "For a while, I- a lot of things happened between then and now. But if he's here, if he's back- and I thought he was gone, I really did. I hoped. If he's back, it's for you. He was only playing, in the graveyard. He likes to draw it out. He's got a thing for slayers," she adds, bitterly.

"Safe to assume he recognized you, too."

"You don't really forget the ones you've made," she says. "It's there when you look at them. You can feel it."

He doesn't ask her how she knows.

"So," he says, exhaling. Rose smiles nervously and lets out a little puff of air she's been holding in her cheeks. She doesn't breathe, but sometimes he thinks he hears her sigh. "Big evil. How decidedly novel for us." Rose's smile widens a fraction. It's possible he's said the right thing.

"Decidedly."

"At least we're never bored," he says, and Rose leans forward to pull him into a kiss.

 

 

"I know what a terrible student I am," he says, much later, to Yana. Rose is gone out into the night, promising to return shortly with a stash from her crypt, and now they are alone in the house. Maybe someday he'll find out what the hell is the deal between her and his watcher, but that's for later. Yana is drying the supper dishes by hand and putting cups away in the cupboard; he stops mid-wipe with a mug stuck onto his knuckles, gaping at the slayer across the kitchen counter.

"What?" Yana asks. His eyes narrow. "Did you thump your head again?"

"No. Mostly not." He sits down on a stool and Yana sets the mug down, watching him steadily. "I've just been thinking. I'm not a very good slayer." He raises his hand when Yana starts to protest. "I'm not. I don't like- you know how I feel about it. It isn't what I wanted to do with my life. It doesn't fit me, the way it's fit other people. Other slayers." Yana says nothing. "I'm sorry. I could have worked harder for you. Been better. More of a fighter. I'm sorry if I've disappointed you."

"My dear boy," Yana says. His face is open, surprised. "You really haven't."

The slayer clears his throat.

"I need your help."

"Anything."

"I want to be a better student. A better slayer. I need to be. So, if you would, teach me, as fast as you can." He looks up. "Teach me how to fight a war." Yana stares at him for a long minute.

"Ah," he says, at last. " _A bove maiore discit arare minor_."

"In English, please," adds the slayer.


End file.
